Small business owners today have access to one of the most powerful business tools: social media.
From Facebook to TikTok to LinkedIn, plenty of platforms and opportunities exist to connect with potential customers, increase brand awareness, and drive traffic to your website.
If you’re ready to start using social media for your small business or are looking to improve your current strategy, we’ve compiled everything you need to know about marketing your business on social media.
Maximizing Social Media for Small Business: 3 Steps to Get Started
Social media is one of the easiest ways to market your small business. Let’s go over exactly how to maximize your social media strategy to generate leads, drive traffic, and ultimately increase sales.
1. Choose the Right Social Media Platforms for Your Business
The first step is to choose which social media platforms to be on. The major social media platforms include:
- TikTok
- YouTube
- Twitter (X)
However, you don’t need to be active on all of them. The best social media platforms for small businesses are where your customers are.
There’s no point in making TikTok videos if your customers hang out on LinkedIn. Figuring out which platforms your customers are on takes some research and experimentation. Start by looking at the demographics for each platform.
For example, most TikTok users are between the ages of 18-34. If your customers are over 35, then it probably isn’t necessary for you to be creating content there.
Another consideration when choosing which platforms to be on is the type of content you want to share. If your product or service is visual — let’s say, a gardening business or wedding photography service — then you’ll probably want to be active on Instagram and Pinterest where aesthetics are heavily prioritized. Or maybe you want to share educational articles from your small business blog. In this case, you’d want to be on text-heavy platforms like Twitter or LinkedIn.
2. Set Social Media Goals
Setting goals for social media is similar to setting goals for your business. Do you want to use social media to increase sales, drive traffic to your website, or connect with influencers? Write these goals down so you know why you’re creating content in the first place.
If you need more guidance creating your goals, follow the SMART goals structure. SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
Some common social media goals include:
- Increasing brand awareness
- Driving traffic
- Increasing lead generation
- Generating customer engagement
Social media is a business tool. Whatever your goals are, social media should be used as a channel to reach your customers before driving them to your business, whether that’s on your website or to an in-person location.
For example, if you want to drive traffic or generate leads from social media, you need to have somewhere to send people, whether that’s a landing page or a website. A website provides more information than your social media accounts, so people can learn about your services, pricing, and products in more detail.
Don’t have a website yet? You can use Durable’s AI Website Builder to set one up in seconds. Simply enter your business information and AI will generate a well-designed and fully functional website — complete with built-in hosting and analytics.
3. Create a Social Media Strategy
Next, create a social media strategy for your small business. Your strategy will guide everything you do, from which platforms to post on, what type of content to create, who your audience is, and how often to post.
Here are the common steps for creating a social media strategy:
- Set goals: These can be the same goals you outlined earlier. What do you want your business to achieve on social media?
- Define your target audience: Understand who your audience is, what type of content they consume, and what other social media accounts they follow.
- Content strategy: Outline which platforms you want to post on and what content you’ll create. Is your content going to be entertaining or educational? Video-driven or image-driven?
- Content execution: Your strategy should outline your target posting frequency and how you plan to maintain a consistent schedule. You should also identify relevant hashtags for each platform to make your content discoverable.
- Performance metrics: Finally, your social media strategy needs to outline the metrics you want to track. These metrics should relate to the goals you initially set. If your goal is to drive more traffic to your website, then you’ll want to track how many link-in-bio clicks you get. Or, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, measure your follower growth and reach over time.
Keep in mind that your social media strategy can evolve as you go. You may set out to create Instagram Reels but then learn that your audience engages more with carousels. That’s why it’s important to monitor your engagement and use social listening to better understand what your followers want to see more of.
Building a Community: Engaging with Your Audience
Connecting with customers is one of the best reasons to use social media for your small business. To build long-term relationships with your customers, it’s essential to interact with your followers.
Think of your social media followers as the customers who walk into your store. You chat with them, let them know about current promotions, and are there to answer any questions.
You should strive to provide that same relationship on social media. Encourage followers to interact with your content, reply to their comments, and show appreciation for your audience.
It’s also important to prepare for customer service inquiries on your pages. Questions and order updates are bound to come up on social media, especially Facebook and Instagram. According to data from Sprout Social, 70% of consumers expect personalized customer service responses on social media.
To make sure you don’t miss an inquiry, turn your notifications on. You can also use a social media management tool or chatbot to set up automatic replies. This acknowledges the customer while giving you time to come up with a detailed reply.
Types of Social Media Content
The type of social media content you can create for your small business is endless. From behind-the-scenes videos to informative infographics to product promotions, there’s a lot of room to be creative and showcase your offerings.
First, consider the difference between organic and paid social media content. If you’re wondering what the difference is between organic and paid social media content, let’s break it down.
Organic vs. Paid Social Media
Organic social posts are the ones you post on your page for free. They’re typically seen by your followers or shown to people the algorithm thinks will be interested.
Paid content is essentially social media advertising. When you create paid social content, there’s a “sponsored” tag letting people know it’s an ad. You can also choose a call-to-action (CTA) for your post, like “Sign Up” or “Learn More.” The CTA can lead people to your profile, a landing page, or your website.
Organic content is free to post — music to every small business owner’s ears. However, given that 96% of small businesses use social media for marketing, it can be challenging to stand out in a saturated market.
That’s where paid content comes in.
Paid social media allows you to increase your reach on a platform and target your ideal customers. Plus, you don’t need to create social ads from scratch. On Facebook and Instagram, for example, you can boost an existing organic post.
Small businesses that want to make the most out of social media will benefit from incorporating both organic and paid social into their marketing strategy.
Not only can you run paid ads on social, but you can also run paid ads on Google.
If you want to start testing ads, use Durable’s free AI Google Ads Writer. Share your business type, how you want to sound, and a little bit of information about your business and we’ll generate Google Ads copy for you.
Content Ideas for Small Business
Here’s a list of social media content ideas to get you started:
- Videos: Whether through Reels, TikTok, or Stories, video content is highly engaging on social media. Share a behind-the-scenes look at your process, a how-to video for your product, or interviews with happy customers.
- Carousels: Image carousels are popular on Instagram, LinkedIn, and even TikTok. You can use them to showcase products, share Frequently Asked Questions, or tell a story.
- User-generated content (UGC): Sharing UGC is a great way to build social proof around your business. Whether customers share images of your service or product on Instagram or write glowing reviews on Facebook, take those opportunities to share them on your social pages.
- Product promotions: Social media is also a great channel for sharing product promotions. If you have an upcoming sale or a limited-time special, you can generate buzz on social to convert followers into customers.
- Blog posts: If you have an active blog, share snippets of the articles on social media. Be sure to include a link to the blog post in your bio so you can drive traffic to your website.
The key to creating engaging content is to listen to your audience. Take a look at your comments section to see what questions people ask or what they react to the most. You can use their feedback to create content they want to see more of.
Looking for an easy way to create social media content? Durable is your answer.
Every Durable subscription includes a suite of marketing tools, including social media post creation. Durable can write captions and generate images for Instagram, Facebook, and X (Twitter).
Easily create social media posts by selecting your topic and watch Durable do all of the work for you. You’ll get a full post inclusive of an image, caption, and hashtags.
If you’re happy with the post, simply copy it to your clipboard and share it on your social channels.
How to Use Social Media Analytics to Measure Success
Your small business social media strategy isn’t complete without social media analytics.
Data can tell you a lot about your customers, your content performance, and even your competitors. The data you choose to track depends on your social media goals.
Some key social media metrics include:
- Reach and impressions
- Engagement rate
- Views (for video content)
- Link clicks or conversions
There are several ways to track your social media performance. You can see your analytics within each platform, whether Facebook Insights, TikTok Studio, or Instagram Insights. These will show you an overview of metrics, including engagement rate, reach, views, and follower changes.
If one of your goals is to increase website traffic, then you can use Google Analytics to identify how much traffic came from social media.
Analyzing your social media performance helps inform your strategy. You can adjust your plan based on the results and track any changes monthly to see what’s working and what needs improvement.
Common Mistakes Small Businesses Make on Social Media (And How to Avoid Them)
If you want to get the most out of your social media presence, there are a few things to avoid. Here are some common mistakes small businesses make on social media, along with helpful ways to prevent them.
- Inconsistency: One of the biggest mistakes small businesses make is not posting consistently. Your followers want to hear from you, and frequent posting keeps your business top of mind. To prevent sporadic posting, create and schedule your social media posts in advance. You can use a scheduling tool that automatically posts for you, so you don’t have to worry about playing catch-up.
- Ignoring your audience: Another mistake is not engaging with your audience. Interacting with your followers is the best way to build long-term relationships. Make sure you have notifications on so you never miss a comment or message. You get the most out of social media when you’re social, so set aside time each day or week to engage with other people’s content.
- Lack of planning: We’ve all been in a situation where you have something to promote, and you’re scrambling to get a post up on social media at the last minute. The best way to avoid this is to create your content ahead of time. If you know that you’re having a big sale this month, create promotional content a few weeks ahead so it’s ready to share when you need it.
Why Social Media is a Must for Small Business Growth
Social media is a powerful tool for small businesses. Not only does it help people discover your brand, but it also provides a channel to connect with your customers and interact with your community.
To get the most out of it, you must have a strategy with concrete goals. You also need to create engaging content consistently and interact with your audience to build long-term relationships. Don’t be afraid to experiment with paid social content whenever you need an engagement boost — just be sure to track your analytics to measure your performance.
Your social media growth can help fuel your small business growth. Use these tips to get started on your social media plan or improve your existing strategy today.
Every Durable subscription comes with built-in social media post-generation tools. Sign up and let Durable do all of the work for you.
